Re: those who went to kansas

Andrew Ford wrote: >> Report please. thanks. >> > > Hey, Andrew, you COULD have left something for the rest of us to report on! Seriously though, this was a GREAT conference. It was billed as the first Informix Only conference since the IBM acquisition. It was touted to be the greatest conference of all. If you spoke to our illustrious IIUG President, Stuart Litel, during the year the superlatives listed over the year since the board came up with the idea were never ending! Well, the reality? Honestly this conference met ALL of my own expectations and amazingly enough it even fulfilled and exceeded ALL of Stuart's predictions. I'm sure that when Stuart said a few months ago that the conference was going to sell out he was at least half hopeful - but we DID sell out! It was quite a different experience from the previous years with IDUG! The first year I attended IIUG/IDUG in 2005 I would see a face or two that I recognized as Informix users and a half dozen Informix/IBM insiders I knew by sight and recognized a dozen other company names as Informix users. By the 2007 event, yes I now knew almost a hundred Informix and IBM faces and recognized a couple of dozen company names, but even so there were many hundreds of faces that could only belong to DB2-ers and most of those mainframe users with no clue at all of what we 'small system' folk do with our time. This year at the -IIUG ONLY- conference: I could be sure that every face I saw that was not wearing a red Marriott jacket was an Informix user or Informix/IBM insider! It was a mind blowing experience. The food was great, but as Stuart said to me: "With me in charge, did you expect it wouldn't be?" Everyone's needs were taken into consideration. There were vegetarian options for anyone who needed or wanted it, four of us had Kosher meals made available and lots salads, coffee and ice cream to supplement them. I heard no complaints about the food or the conference content from anyone - also a big change from previous years. I think my exclamation point key is broken. Over the last four years we've seen the attitude at IBM change from incomprehension through confusion to grudging support. This year it was clear that IBM has finally gotten it! (Ooo the key's working again!) The first two years I attended meetings IBMers wanted to know "What should our message be?". Last year they wanted to know "How can we do a better job of getting the message out?". Improvement! This year the question was: "Here's how we're planning to get the message out. What else can we do?" Big change! Thanks Andrew for the play-by-play! To the Conference Planning Committee (CPC) and the entire 2007/2008 Board of Directors (BOD) - you've already gotten my personal appreciation in person at the first 2008/2009 BOD meeting and throughout this week! However, here's a public pat on the back for a job well done. On to next year! Planning has already begun and Stuart will give you details as soon as the BOD nails them down. Leave it for now to say the expressed intent of the BOD is to make next year's conference bigger and better. Art S. Kagel IIUG Board of Directors Oninit > I think the conference was huge success, far exceeding the expectations of > many. > > There were about 350 people attending the conference, more than double the > 125 to 150 numbers from the last 3 conferences making this conference the > largest IDS event since the IBM acquisition. > > Things started off on Sunday with the tutorial sessions, 8 1/2 day (4 in the > morning, 4 in the afternoon) training classes that could be attended for an > additional (reasonable) cost and 2 free all day vendor sponsored tutorials. > After a full day of packed tutorial sessions we had the Sunday night welcome > reception in the Exhibit hall with the vendors and an open bar (no drink > tickets required for this conference, so people visited the bar early and > often) > > Monday morning Ambuj Goyal, General Manager of IBM Information Management, > got us started with a keynote address to a full room at 8 AM and then it was > off to the technical sessions at 9:30 AM. 4 concurrent tracks: Admin and > Performance, Applications and Tools, The Informix Edge and Advanced Support > Topics were run through the day. Each technical session was 1 hour and > there were 6 time slots each day (4 tracks * 6 time slots * 3 days = 72 > total 1 hour technical sessions given by IDS developers, IDS support, IDS > Business partners, IDS DBAs and IDS Application Developers). I was able to > attend 2 great presentations: Top Tips Learned from Performance PMRs by Dr. > Elisibeth Bach from IBM Advanced Support and Engine Hangs, Debugging Methods > and Diagnostics Tools by Ron Privett from IBM Advanced Support. On Monday > night the IDS development and support teams from the Lenexa labs came to the > conference for the Developer/Support cook out (again, with open bar, dude.) > This was a great opportunity for the IDS users and IDS developers/support to > meet in person, the party officially ended at 8:30 PM but spilled out into > the hallway and hotel bar after the Exhibit Hall was closed. > > Tuesday morning's keynote was again a full house and given by Arvind > Krishna, Vice President of IBM Data Management, where he announced the > release of Cheetah 2, IDS 11.5. This was great because now we could finally > be released from the NDA that came with the beta versions of 11.5 and > allowed the IDS development guys and gals to openly speak about writable > secondaries, connection managers and failover arbitrators (and have you seen > the 11.5 onconfig.std file?) More technical sessions during the day, I was > able to attend Continuous Availability in IDS by some new guy named Madison > Pruet, The High Performance Loader by Rob Beal, a Field Technical Specialist > for IBM and Accelerating IDS with solidDB, IBM's newly acquired in memory > database product that has plans to be available as an front end cache for > IDS to further improve OLTP performance. On Tuesday everyone loaded up in > chartered buses and went to a comedy club for a BBQ dinner, drinks and stand > up. > > Wednesday was the last day but it was still a full day (literally, technical > sessions ran until 5:40 PM and discussions continued in the hall as the > hotel started cleaning up chairs and what not). At 8 AM we had the IIUG > Annual General Meeting where IIUG Director's Awards were given to Madison > Pruet (that new guy from IBM) and Eric Herber (father of the Informix-Zone, > all around good guy and really dedicated to the growth of IDS). After the > IIUG meeting which included a panel discussion with the people heading up > development, marketing, support and partners it was off to the final full > day of technical sessions. On Wednesday I made it to Making your Engine Hum > with ALICE and other BTSCANNER tips by Mark Jamison of IBM, IDS Performance > Tuning by Art Kagel (you may have heard of him), Modern Information Security > for the Internet by Tom Beebe from Advanced Data Tools and finally > Optimizing Linux of IDS by Alexey Sonkin from CDIC. > > So that's the play by play of what went down each day but there